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I feel like I am a bit ahead of the game here. In the last few months people have been writing blog posts, myself included, about what Blizzard should after WoW Classic. Blizz can’t just stop at vanilla, can they?

The Classic Background

But I have been watching debates rage over how classic servers or progression should be handled for about a decade over in the EverQuest forums. Remember, SOE put out the first EverQuest progression server back in 2007. That was just eight years after the game launched, proving once again that it takes Blizzard twice as long to do everything I suppose.

So I had to chuckle a bit when Kaylriene suggested this might be unknown territory in his post the other day. Unknown only if you focus solely on WoW I suppose.

Now, granted, what Blizzard is attempting to do is way above and beyond what SOE/Daybreak have ever attempted, which is to create an authentic 2006 experience. This has set expectations which means that they won’t be able to half-ass their way through adding additional expansions. And I think that they must, at some point, go that route. Again, given the EverQuest experiences with this over the last decade, an authentic revisit to some of these old expansions is worth as much in subscriptions as another new expansion.

The problem is that the WoW audience is not a unified group. No MMO audience is. And this progression/nostalgia idea tends to sort people out into a few different categories which I have noticed and noted over the years. They are:

The Classicists

These are the people who are not interested in progression. In fact, they’re complaining that WoW Classic is coming in at version 1.12. They are the ones arguing about what vanilla WoW really was. They don’t want a 2006 version of the game, they want the November 23, 2004 version. They want all the warts and issues of the first day of the game. No looting bug, no deal! And they sure as hell don’t want any expansions. They want the game to stay right there, locked in time.

The Progression Raiders

These have been the key drivers for EverQuest, and will likely have a notable role with WoW Classic. These are the old raiding groups that get back together to race to level cap in order to be world first/server first to take down bosses, farm raids for gear, and advance to the final boss in any expansion. They want a specific phase to last only as long as it takes them to bring down the boss and farm for enough gear to move on. They are always pushing for a faster unlock pace.

The Nostalgia Tourists

These are the people who want to relive the good old days, but are not too concerned with total authenticity or wearing the launch day hair shirt. I am mostly in this group. I want to take my time going through the content, so I am not in a hurry to see the next expansion show up. However, I still want the game to advance eventually.

The Fresh Starters

Bhagpuss first identified this group to me. There is a group of players out there just loves that fresh server smell, running out into the newbie zone with a mass of low level players, and just enjoying the spectacle of a new world coming alive. They just shows up again and again at every new special server launch, hang out for a while, get to a point where they are done, then wait for the next one. If nothing else, an easy crowd to please, and their subscription dollars spend just the same as everybody else’s.

The Cult of PvP

This is sort of a sub-group, since people here usually identify with one of the other groups as well. But they just want you to know that PvP is the most important thing and the biggest draw and that if you just focused on PvP everybody would be happy and the servers would overflow. When this hasn’t panned out in the past, at least in Norrath, the PvP response has always been that not enough focus was spent on PvP.

The Live Purists

These people want all the other groups to just shut up. They are all about the live game and see any diversion into nostalgia servers as players and resources stolen from their game. J. Allen Brack is their patron saint and they will repeat ad nauseum that nobody wants this and it is all a waste of time and the servers will be dead in three months and so on and so forth.

And they are not totally wrong. There is always some impact on the live game player base, and development time can be a bit of a zero sum game. There are only so many people on the team and hours in the day.

Then there are The Outsiders, who are not really a direct faction, but who wander into the picture now and again. They are generally noticeable for being against the game overall, retro, live, or whatever, but still insisting that their voice be heard. They can be random passers by who just drop a line and move on, or they can be the die hards who show up to bad mouth various games any time they are mentioned anywhere on the internet. You know who I am talking about.

They occasionally make temporary common cause with one group. Right now they fit in with the Live Purists because they are loudly predicting failure for WoW Classic. But often seem to just be at war with them all.

None of these groups forms a majority, and the boundaries between them can be pretty soft at times, with the PvP group something of an overlay on a couple of the other groups. Depending on the circumstances, various groups will be natural allies or opponents.

If the topic is whether or not there should be nostalgia servers, it will be everybody versus the Live Purists.

When it comes to content, the Classicists tend to be at war with the other pro-nostalgia groups.

Content pacing, and suddenly the Progression Raiders are the loudest voice, and more often than not get what they want over the objections of the other groups.

When things are taking too long or when the server launch is way in the rear view mirror, the Fresh Starters start asking for the next server.

And the Cult of PvP remains consistent in its demands for focus to be on PvP ahead of everything else.

I have not seen anything so far to indicate that World of Warcraft and WoW Classic will end up being any different. The question is really just how soon Blizzard gets going on creating an unlock, advancement, or progression system to allow people to move forward beyond vanilla.

Until then, the Classicists sort of get what they want, even if it isn’t the exact right version.

A little over a month back Trion World’s put out their producer’s letter for Rift in which they were explicitly eyeing the seemingly evergreen fields of video game nostalgia with a mind towards making a few bucks on the idea. Leave it to Trion to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon only after Blizzard began lumbering in that direction with WoW Classic. We may not be in Azeroth anymore, but the influence of that world can always be felt across the genre.

Anyway, the plan was for something called Rift Prime, a nostalgia server set to follow the well trod path that EverQuest has been going down with increasing frequency over the last decade. As with the well honed EverQuest model, the basic plan put forward back then would be a server with vanilla content (with some adjustment to the easier to access dials and switches to make the current state of play seem a bit more retro) that would unlock expansion content over time, and which would be available only to subscribers… excuse me, patrons… which would allow Trion to remove much of the cash shop gimmickry that otherwise pays the bills on the standard live servers. All of this, and some other vague statements, were slated to become reality in “Spring of 2018” according to the producer’s letter.

While you may have noticed the rising tide of sarcasm up to this point, let me assure you I was, and remain, in full approval of this idea. While I’d be interest to know whether the idea of Blizzard soon taking up every last seat on the nostalgia bus or the building backlash against lockboxes might have set Trion on this path, that is mostly idle curiosity. That it is happening is the the real thing, the coin of the realm, and I am on board with it.

And spring seemed like a good time frame for me last month. I was still enamored with Azeroth and pet battles and what not, and expected to remain so for another few months or so before tiring of it. The launch could have been quite a while coming, as late as the front half of June, as we will recall from the Landmark Spring launch that came about on June 10, 2016. Massively OP tried to make that something to complain about, but in the northern hemisphere summer is generally accepted to start on the solstice, not on June 1st. A cabal of astrophysicists and calendar makers have made this a thing. Trion just had to get there between March 20 and June 21st.

I know that seems more than a bit pedantic, especially in California where is can get “spring-ish” in February, but I have been trained by years of working in software that an estimate like “spring” generally means as far into spring as you can get away with… like June 10th… the same way that “the middle of the month” means any day save the first or the last of a given month and “in a future release” means a point in time somewhere before the heat death of the universe. Nothing is ever early.

This mattered to me because, as noted, I am still invested in WoW right now and I hate to dump a game I am enjoying for some new variable. A bird in the hand is worth a pig in a poke and all that. And few things can rain on playing another MMO than currently having fun playing WoW.

My first though was, “Oh, hey, that’s my birthday.” I’m not sure if that is a sign or not.

Anyway, I am as ready as I can be I suppose. After the producer’s letter I went and got the Glyph launcher, now considerably more trim since it let go of its Steam aspirations, figured out my login credentials, downloaded and patched Rift, then actually logged in. So I am ready on that front. I still need to buy my way into patron status… subscribe… to get access to Rift Prime, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

But do I want to play?

As mentioned, still being invested in WoW is an issue. I’m on the downside of the usual WoW high and, while not ready to walk away just this minute, it wouldn’t be a tragedy if I did. It might be better if I walked off still hungry for a bit more Azeroth.

Meanwhile, to get in on day one of a new server can be a special thing in and of itself. And Rift’s world, or at least the initial content from launch, was made up of a set of very well designed zones that I really enjoyed the first time through… and the second and the third and the fourth time. So I am good there.

RIFT Prime will not be an exact copy of launch RIFT, and certain features that were added to RIFT to expand gameplay or improve quality of life will be available from day one. These include: Dimensions, Looking for Group, Looking for Raid, current Warfronts, and Wardrobes.

Instant adventures is off the table however. That’s okay, IA was something of a “keep people busy while we get some new content out” sort of thing.

The server will also have level scaling for zones, so if you wander into a lower level zone you haven’t finished up, you’ll be scaled down to the level of the content. No running about one-shotting everything. Good as well.

There will be a cash shop, but it won’t offer gear or bags or lockboxes for the RMT currency. There will just be cosmetics, mounts, and services available. However, if you already have Rift Credits on your account… I have a bunch left from the F2P transition… you won’t be able to use them. There will be special Prime Credits for this server, though when the server closes any Prime Credits you have will become normal Rift Credits.

The FAQ says that they expect the server to run for at least a year, which after so much exposure to the mighty mountain of expansion unlocks that come with an EverQuest retro server, seems like a very short time horizon. but Rift just doesn’t have that much to unlock.

And maybe a year is good. Honestly, I am not interested in going into Storm Legion or beyond, the zone design there being the antithesis of the what I enjoyed about the launch zones. So that would leave me playing for a few months before wandering off. I don’t need a server to last more than a year to get what I am looking for. And if it is a success, the shorter duration will likely lead to more such servers.

And, of course, Trion is selling a special Rift Primogenitor Pack in their web store for $30, which gets you the following:

30 days of Patron access for the purchaser

2 voucher codes for 15 days of Patron access each (30 days total). Invite your friends to play, apply it to your alts or use the time yourself!

A mount out of the ordinary: Armored White War Tiger

A title exclusive to Prime players: Primogenitor

Cloak of the Void

A new Prime portrait frame

Essentially, if you buy it all just for yourself, you’re getting two months of Patron access for about the same price as two months of Patron access, with a few goodies thrown in to sweeten the deal.

So I am leaning in favor of this. I am not totally sold, but I have two weeks to decide. And since I am crashing from my typing binge, I’ll close with a poll about this:

Here we are again, a common refrain at the top of these annual posts, but what else have I got going for me? This will at least be the last of the annual posts for quite a while.

Last month I posted my review of my annual MMO outlook and found that I had played nothing on the list. That was in part because most of the list didn’t ship, but also because I just reverted to the mean and played what I always play, which is WoW, EQII, and EVE.

So this year I am going to eschew the looking forward aspect of my annual post. Let’s face it, there isn’t that much coming that both interests me AND is likely to ship in 2018.

I am going to, here at the start of the new year, buckle down and commit to playing a new MMO in 2018, but only one that is new to me. There are plenty of old MMORPGs still knocking around, classics of the genre, storied in their time, that I have never touched.

I will spend at least a month playing one of these titles seriously and blogging about it, because that it the point of the exercise to a certain extent, so that old timers can come by and mock my ignorance and tell me how things were back in the good old days and all of that.

So here is the list I am mulling over with some pros and cons as I see them from the outside. Each game has some minor claim to fame in my mind, has come up occasionally, and is more than ten years old.

I had some friends who left EverQuest back in the day and found it a pretty decent time. At that point I was living in a house with spotty internet at best so wasn’t keen to invest in it. But now connectivity is no problem.

Pros: It was supposed to take the “suck” out of MMORPGs and also has some sort of free plan.

Cons: It is really a realm vs. realm sort of game as I understand it. Am I ready for old school PvP? Also, as above, some of this money goes to EA, which does not please me.

A non-combat, social MMO that resets to a new “telling” of the tale every so often, one of those games that gets mentions a lot but rarely by anybody actually playing it.

Pros: The first 24 hours are free.

Cons: Social might be a problem for me going in solo, especially since the current “telling” has been going on for over two year now, so I might feel late to the party. Also, after the first 24 hours you have to subscribe.

So that is a list of eight possibilities. I won’t be jumping straight into any of them. This will likely be a spring-to-summer sort of event. That means if I am missing some vital option from the list you can chime in via comments or the poll below using the “other” field. Otherwise take a moment to pick which one of the above might be the most worthwhile venture.

If there isn’t a poll above this line AdBlock may have eaten it. It happens.

I won’t say I’ll follow the will of the respondents, but if one title seems to be leading the pack substantially I will give that some weight. Also, a bit of trivia; I had previously made tags for every game on the list above. I suppose that says something, though I am not sure what, besides that I have mentioned them all here at some time before.

And, of course, if you want to see how this sort of post has played out in the past, you can check out attempts from past years:

It is that time of the year again and BlizzCon looms, just a few days off. I am now in the midst of my internal monologue BlizzCon Virtual Ticket debate.

Virtual Ticket Decision Time

The Blizzard watching portion of online gaming journalists seem to think it is pretty much a lock that the next World of Warcraft expansion will be announced on Friday. If that is the case, then I definitely want the Virtual Ticket. As I have said before, there is often as much in the way people say things as the text they are speaking.

I have found, in years past, the quick transcriptions and summaries of video game journalists to not only fail to deliver the “feel” of a presentation but to occasionally boarder on near deceitfulness, albeit unintentional, when passing on information.

A problem of journalism in all areas of the press. I used to swear at the local paper because every story I had first hand knowledge of would invariably contain errors in material fact.

Anyway, if there is to be an announcement about the next WoW expansion, I want to get the Virtual Ticket so I can watch and re-watch key presentations.

And certainly such an announcement seems likely, if only because of historical precedent. Every other BlizzCon tends to be an expansion announcement, with the off year being the year the expansion ships. The only exception this decade has been WoW Legion, and they had to announce that before BlizzCon in 2015 because Blizzard so badly fumbled content pacing for Warlords of Draenor that they needed some good news to off-set the record loss of subscribers they had to announce just two days before. (They subsequently stopped talking about subscription numbers, except for that Tom Chilton slip.) They didn’t even have the cinematic set to go, a standard part of past announcements, which I found indicative of their haste to find good news to spread.

So aside from that exception, BlizzCon on odd numbered years seems to be a pretty likely time to hear about the next bi-annual-ish expansion.

The problem is that there hasn’t been the usual smoking gun. Nobody who has been dumpster diving in the game assets has found a map of a new area or splash screen with a new name, just some sporadic items that could be part of a new expansion, but might not be. And it is awfully early for Blizzard to be putting assets into the live game files for something that is likely to be at least a year off. That makes me think all of that speculation is just finding the black cat in the dark room that isn’t there.

Meanwhile, Blizzard itself hasn’t screwed up and accidentally posted the new expansion page on their site early again or had somebody on the team leaking information, the usual harbingers of an expansion announcement. Of course, the week is still young. There is time yet.

Yes, after the opening keynote the next thing on the big stage is an hour of WoW, but aside from pride of place, that isn’t much different than the Overwatch or Hearthstone panels on the main stage. (Well, Hearthstone doesn’t get a full hour because even *I* can tell you “what’s next” there, more card packs to buy lest you fall behind the meta.)

So while logic and my gut both agree that an expansion announcement is highly likely, but I haven’t seen anything yet that guarantees it.

And, without that announcement and the subsequent discussions wallowing in what details Blizz cares to share, is there anything else I want out of BlizzCon?

Overwatch – I don’t play it, so any announcement there has naught to do with me.

Hearthstone – Play it occasionally, very casually, with the free cards, so the inevitable new card pack announcement isn’t going to mean anything beyond being beaten by newer and more powerful decks.

Heroes of the Storm – Hahahaha!

StarCraft – I don’t care so much about StarCraft II and we already got the remastered version of the original StarCraftearlier this year, so not much for me there.

Diablo – Blizzard has said there won’t be anything for the Diablo franchise. The schedule only shows two presentations, one about visual effects and one about community. There is no “what’s next” panel. Last year was the 20th anniversary, which got us a special event, and we got the necromancer mini-pack earlier this year, so unless they have news about that Diablo II remaster that came up back in 2015 (along with the StarCraft remaster which, as noted, we got!) it would be hard to come up with something that would interest me much.

There is a poll above this line, which might get eaten by AdBlock. I pay not to have ads here, so blocking them is mildly futile I suppose.

As I said above, I am inclined to believe there will be an expansion announcement, not only because of past history, but also because I am not sure how WoW goes forward for another year without one. How could they NOT have an expansion announcement? But one might also ask how they could let some past expansions molder for as long as a year with no updates.

I will probably get the Virtual Ticket.

But if there isn’t an announcement, will there be anything else worthwhile?

We got all sorts of new information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch console yesterday including price ($300), launch date (March 3rd), region locking (none), and that you can pre-order RIGHT NOW!

And of course there will be Mario Kart

Every gaming news sight worth that title has some sort of story up about Nintendo’s new console today, with more to follow as demos commence. This is the moment we have been waiting for since the initial announcement back in October.

I have to admit I like the Switch on paper at least. I like the size, the light weight design, the mobility, and the built-in screen that makes it a portable. The latter is important in a one TV household.

Oddly, one feature that drew my attention is the ability to take a screen shot of game play. As a blogger who charts his gaming journey through his writing, the ability to set a scene with a screen shot rather than the MS Paint that are my words has direct appeal. Not sure that is a tipping point level feature, but it is interesting.

And then there is the price. $300 seems like a good compromise price. I think at $250 it would be a no-brainer purchase for people and that at the $350 mark that was rumored just before the announcement the Switch started to creep too close to XBox and PS4 territory so that you might have to start considering is games exclusive to the Switch would be worth the commitment. But at $300 it is just far enough away that it can fall into the impulse purchase zone for some.

On the flip side, I am not really a console gamer. We got a Wii back in 2007 and I picked up a PlayStation 3 in 2011 after the prices had gone way down. The Wii got a LOT of play at our house. My daughter and I used to play games on the Wii every weekend for hours and hours.

However, my daughter was 5 years old when we got the Wii and would wake me up early on Saturday morning so we could start playing. Now she is 15, I am not sure she has seen a Saturday morning before 10am lately, and if she wants me to do anything with her on the weekend it is to teach her to drive so she can get her license in a year.

Meanwhile the PlayStation 3 has been mostly a video playing device since we bought it. My daughter did enjoy Little Big Planet, but after that wore off it has been more about Netflix and Amazon Prime. We could replace it with a Roku box if it wasn’t for the fact that it is also our Blu-Ray player.

And the last console I owned before those two was a SEGA Genesis back in 1992. And the console before that was an Atari 2600 way back in 1977. I’ve been a PC gamer since 1983 and online since 1986. I never had a NES or a SNES or an N64, so lack any Mario nostalgia. My Nintendo franchise of choice is Pokemon, which probably explains why we have more DS series handhelds (2x DS Lite, 1x DSi, 1x DSi XL, 2x 3DS XL) sitting around the house than the count of living room consoles systems I have ever owned.

So for me, while I like the idea of the Switch, I haven’t seen anything compelling that makes me want to run out and pre-order today. $300 isn’t a bad price, but that same $300 would go a long ways towards replacing my 14 year old Dell 1600×1200 monitor with something bigger and better, which would have a much greater impact on my gaming… and would probably also require me to upgrade my video card.

That is where I stand. I like the Switch. At this point in time, if I was going to buy a living room console, the Switch would be a serious contender. But there isn’t enough there yet to make it an automatic purchase. It seems fresher than the Sony and Microsoft offerings, but it isn’t as magical as the Wii seemed back in 2006.

As I noted in my ten year anniversary post, my own outlook as an MMORPG gamer has changed over the last decade. I came to blogging in a time when the genre was growing and ambitions seemed unlimited. We would get a continuous stream of newer and shinier things as MMOs expanded into new territory and conquered the world.

Now I feel like Estragon, nodding off as we wait for the promised future that never arrives. To my mind somebody could do an easy parody of the song Little Boxes to describe the state of the genre.

There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all poor copies of WoW
And they all look just the same.

Stoking the embers of enthusiasm is difficult. It isn’t so much “no new worlds to conquer” as “no new worlds worth giving a damn about” these days. Differentiation seems like variations of the same over used tropes and standards.

Also, not done with the “Little Boxes” theme… picture by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

And yet I persist, sitting here at the end of the year, looking into the mists of 2017 and wondering if he will come. Is there something out there that might spark the imagination and rekindle the enthusiasm for virtual worlds I felt back in 2006? Or will I be sitting here a year from now writing about how, once again, I mostly played EVE Online and Minecraft while alternating between World of Warcraft and EverQuest II for my fantasy fix?

What is even an option for 2017?

Well, EverQuest Next is out, having been cancelled earlier this year after the traditional SOE “months of silence” indicator that it just wasn’t going to happen. But I wasn’t even optimistic enough to put that on the list last year.

Blizzard isn’t going to do any more MMOs… not that I am sure we would want them to… but that is out. And then there is the perennial list of “maybe this year…” titles like Star Citizen that probably won’t be anything more than tech demos and pre-release “don’t you dare criticize me!” tiny tastes of past promises.

Still, there are MMOs that may come out in 2017. Time to fake some enthusiasm. Plus there was a nice list over at Massively OP from which I plan to crib. There are even some titles in which I am invested, allowing for a variety of definitions for the word “invested.” So here are a DOZEN titles that I am going to throw out there as possibilities for me in 2017. That is more options than any previous list ever! Go me.

1 – Project: Gorgon

Gut Reaction: Why doesn’t this have a Wikipedia page yet?

Rationalization: I’ve paid for it, my peeks in have shown it developing nicely, it could be a thing!

Chance: Not sure that islands floating in the sky is really something I am missing, so very low

7 – Lost Ark

Gut Reaction: Raiders of the?

Rationalization: A clicky action MMORPG might be an idea! And at least it has a placeholder for a Wikipedia page.

Chance: Given that Diablo III is going to try to eke out another year at least with seasons, nostalgia, and a new class, it might be worth a try. 30% chance if it goes live, higher if it is on Steam and goes on sale.

8 – Sea of Thieves

Gut Reaction: Pirates!

Rationalization: The urge to play with tall ships and cutlasses balanced with memories of Pirates of the Burning Sea… which were not all bad, but I also never went back and played it again either.

Chance: Dampened by the cross platform aspect, as the Windows version will likely have the horrible console interface. If I could find a compelling feature though, it might have a shot. Oh, and it would have to ship.

Rationalization: I did play a couple hours of it already and it did have a flavor and charm of its own. The old grand dad of F2P titles, it has a huge following for some reason.

Chance: It also had a somewhat odd control scheme, and the fact that I am only now recalling that I played it probably doesn’t bode well. But it has at least fucking shipped already! That raises the odds dramatically!

Rationalization: Part of me wants to believe that 1999 can be recreated. Maybe he can get Smed over to help now that he is at loose ends and really get the 1999 party rockin!

Chance: You know, if something ships… I’ll probably buy-in and play. But despite the long demo videos, I am not convinced yet that something will ever ship… and 2017 seems like an extreme long-shot if it does.

So there are dozen MMO-esque games that I am going to lay out there and semi-sort-of commit to looking into if it doesn’t take too much time away from Minecraft, EVE Online, and EQII / WoW.

Which on that list do you think I should prioritize should the opportunity arise? (i.e. should it actually ship if it isn’t there already?) Here is a Poll (which you may not see if you have an AdBlocker running):

Blizzard’s new game, Overwatch, launches today, or yesterday depending on where you live. May 24, 2016 is listed everywhere on the promotional material, though the worldwide launch schedule was a bit more complicated than that.

Ovwerwatch launching in a time zone near you

I think it is live everywhere it is supposed to be on launch day as of the time this post goes up. There is a press release from Blizz about it and everything.

I had to be educated on this worldwide go-live because, I must admit, I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the game. Not that my not paying attention is in any way indicative of what other people have been up to. The open beta was such a success that it got an infographic.

So many players in the open beta

The reason I haven’t been paying much attention is… well… I suppose three out of four Google responses can help me out with that:

Back to this game…

I wonder if people search on “Overwatch is bad” are looking for reasons to dislike the title or searching out people who don’t like the game? I suppose that at least Overwatch isn’t dead yet. Give it a few weeks.

Anyway, the game being bad isn’t one of the reasons. I suspect the game is actually good, given what I have seen people writing about it.

No, it is more of the other three, where it feels something like Team Fortress 2, cast as a MOBA, for which somebody expects me to pay $40/$60/$130, depending on which edition, which adds up to totally not worth it in my book. But, as noted previously, I am long past my FPS days. If I don’t care enough to play the free ones, I am not going to pay to play one.

And then there is the fact that it is one of the few Blizzard titles not to appear on Mac OS. That is a factor in our house because my daughter has a nice iMac. She has been into TF2 off and on, which is available on Mac OS, so had her eye on Overwatch… right up until Blizzard said support for Mac OS was off the table. Then she was pissed and will hear no more of this game. She feels let down by Blizz.

Then there is the MOBA aspect. Blizz has been making a big deal about playing heroes rather than classes for Overwatch. So you choose a hero with a special set of skills and abilities, which sounds very MOBA-like. I think I said something about that back when the game was announced at BlizzCon 2014.

But then there is also the MOBA monetization coming as well. They haven’t started selling new heroes… yet… but skins are already available for purchase along with my least favorite aspect of free to play, called Loot Boxes this time around, where in you can pay money… and Blizz doesn’t go for that microtransaction currency stuff, they straight up value things in real world currency and bill your credit card directly… for random items. I didn’t like that system when I was a kid and tried collecting baseball cards and nothing has changed my mind about it ever since.

Ah well, that might just be me.

So I won’t be playing Overwatch. But it is a major launch from a developer who also happens to run an MMORPG, so seemed worthy of note, and doubly so since bits of Overwatch were salvaged from the wreckage of Titan, the MMO project from Blizzard that was cancelled a while back. Also, it seems to be dominating the gaming news cycle right about now.